


Tell the Lord of the Radch what you require.

by Crane_Among_Celandines



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Imperial Radch Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 00:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12158238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crane_Among_Celandines/pseuds/Crane_Among_Celandines
Summary: Kalr Five, choosing tea sets.





	Tell the Lord of the Radch what you require.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Imperial Radch Week challenge, day 4, "Favourites"

I watched the fleet captain turn and walk away towards the lift. For several long moments, I simply stood there, staring. _Go back to the palace_ , she’d said. _Tell the lord of the Radch what you require._ Tell the _lord of the Radch_ what I _require_? When I should properly not dare more than to abase myself before her? I frowned, as I thought this, then caught myself. No, that wasn’t right. I was a soldier, sworn to my Lord’s service and thus to the fleet captain’s orders. Surely, following her orders could not be improper. Surely.

“Ship?” I asked, silently.

“Don’t worry,” Ship said, its tone reassuring. “It’s not you Fleet Captain’s angry with. Go ahead. It’ll be all right.”

I made my way back across the concourse, back to the reception area. Approached the citizen behind the desk. “The fleet captain sends me with a request for my lord,” I said. Long habit kept my face and voice even, as Captain Vel insisted was befitting of a soldier. I was grateful, now, for that practice.

The citizen gestured with a yellow-gloved hand to the door from which we had just emerged. “You are permitted,” she said.

I was grateful I had not needed to explain the details of my request. I passed through the doorway, into the first audience hall that lay beyond it. One of my lord’s bodies was there. Not the youth with whom the fleet captain had just spoken, but an elderly one, hair iron-grey and eyes set in wrinkles. “Did Fleet Captain Breq think of a belated retort?” she said, raising one eyebrow.

“My lord,” I started. Hesitated, elected to ignore the question. “The fleet captain sends me to request, with your very great indulgence, that you might provide us with a tea service. The ship has none of its own, and as Captain Vel’s belongings are not to remain with us…” I felt a momentary pang of loss for the best of Captain Vel’s porcelain, a beautiful set of cylindrical cups in a cerulean glaze. They had been produced by an island on Ateh, since lost to a tsunami, and their like could no longer be made. I hoped her heirs would appreciate them. That they would in fact reach her heirs, and not simply be buried, unseen and unappreciated in a crate.

My lord nodded. “Follow me,” she said. She led me through a winding series of corridors, first baroque with ornamentation, then plain and grey, to a small storage room. “The porcelain is kept here. Take any two sets.” With that, she turned and left.

I looked around the room. My hands were trembling slightly. So many boxes! And all with dishes worthy of my lord’s palace! With an effort, I relaxed. If I dropped a bowl… no, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Reverently, I opened the box at the top of the nearest pile. Within it was a tea-set, all in black-and-white cloisonné. After a moment, I recognised the style; it was Outradch. Probably about two thousand years old at a guess, from the period where pottery inspired by the Emanations was in vogue. On closer inspection, I could see the tiny, repeating Etrepa-Bo motif worked into the rims. Beautiful, but I had never much cared for cloisonné. Regretfully I closed the box, and set it in an empty space: I would work through each pile from the top to the bottom, I decided.

Some two hours later, I found the Bractware. A full table-set, including the serving pieces! I’d never seen a complete one before; my elder mother’s cousin had once shown me her family’s, a dozen dinner and side plates with a white and crimson scrollwork design. But they hadn’t had the rest of the set. These were mostly glazed in a pale blue, with a fine angular filigree motif in deep violet, which ran around the rim of each piece. I loved the restraint of Bractware. So many styles embellished their pieces to the point of gaudiness, but the best Bract potters had known exactly when to stop. The utensils were gorgeous too; silver-white metal with wooden fittings stained a deep purple, matching the design on the dishes perfectly. By the style of the plates, narrow-rimmed and flat, I placed them at around twelve centuries old – later periods had preferred deeper, more dished forms.

One problem of course; no tea bowls. The Bract had not drunk tea prior to the annexation, and so there was no teaware among their traditional work. Oh, certainly there was post-annexation teaware in the style, but it wasn’t _authentic_ , the classic aesthetic having been diluted by exposure to Radchaai culture. I set the Bractware to one side, and opened another box. I simply had to find a tea-set which would match it.

Another hour of searching brought me a tea-set in deep rose glass. The hue was perfect, just dark enough to mesh well with the violet and aqua porcelain. They were, I realised, antique Osck work; about seven hundred years old. I looked at the base. Incised in spare strokes was a lotus, one petal falling loose. Yes, Seiaatr Osck, third of the Osck glassblower line. Each bowl had a subtly different design cut into it, a flowing pattern of calligraphy in a language no-one alive now knew. Seiaatr, the story went, had found an old book during a pilgrimage, and bought it for a pittance. Its writing, incomprehensible but beautiful, had been the inspiration for much of her work. I turned the bowl in my hand, enjoying the feel of the engraving, attenuated though it was by my gloves. Would I really be allowed to take them? And the Bractware? They were antiques of extraordinary value, if not quite as old as some of the others I’d found. But my lord had said to take what I wished. Surely she would have said if I were meant to avoid certain things. And every single box I had opened had been more precious than any I had ever before laid hands on.

I put the tea-set away in its box, and picked up the Bractware, then made my way back through the corridors to the first audience hall. My lord was waiting there, apparently idle.

“Show me what you chose,” she said. Her tone was conversational, but I felt my stomach clench. Had I been wrong? Was she now going to deny my choices? My lord did not like the fleet captain, that much was obvious. Was I being used as a message to her?

I stepped forward and laid the boxes on the table. My lord opened them, and examined the contents. “You chose the Bractware first,” she said. “Then the tea-set to match, because the Bractware lacks those pieces.”

“Yes, my lord.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “I had meant for you to take two complete sets,” she said, at last. “I did not know you were a connoisseur.” The young body with which the fleet captain had been speaking entered the room, carrying a box of black wood. She opened it before me, revealing the flawlessly graceful white porcelain she had used earlier. “I made these myself.” She closed the box again, and proffered it to me. “Take it.”

Speechless, I reached out and carefully took it from her hands. “My lord,” I began.

She raised a hand, cutting me off. “My whim, to make a gift to someone who will appreciate it,” she said. “Travel safely.”

It was a dismissal. I picked up the Bractware and the rose glass tea-set, and left.

As I made my way back to _Mercy of Kalr_ ’s shuttle, I thought on what my lord had said.

Who, I wondered, would not appreciate a gift from the Lord of the Radch?

**Author's Note:**

> Captain Vel's porcelain is a reference to the pride of the Atageini collection in C J Cherryh's Foreigner series.  
> Outradch is the province from which Seivarden's family came, one of the oldest in the Radch. Canonically, we have no idea about their teaware.  
> There is a possible continuity error in the books: upon first seeing the rose glass teabowls, Breq notes that they are handblown and about 700 years old. When at table, she describes the Bractware as being about 1200 years old. My explanation for this is that the rose glass bowls are not themselves Bractware, but are actually a separate set.  
> Kalr Five describes post-annexation Bract teaware as not being 'authentic', the same way that Station Administrator Celar describes the songs of the field-workers. My headcanon is that this is actually a much more specific and complex Radchaai concept than can be easily rendered in English, having to do with the influence (proper and beneficial of course) of Radchaai culture on annexed populations. See also the remark from the person in the undergarden tea shop: "People come here to drink, or eat /authentic/ Ychana food."  
> Seiaatr Osck is named for the god Aatr and shares the house of Hundred-Captain Rubran Osck who once served aboard Justice of Toren. My assumption is that a house which could produce a military officer of significant rank is also likely to produce other notable people. The lotus crest has no significance.  
> Finally, Breq remarks upon seeing the white porcelain that she was surprised Kalr Five had the courage to ask for it. But that porcelain, after all, had just been used; it seems unlikely it would have already been back in the storeroom when Five was taken there to choose. And I find the idea of Anaander Mianaai being impressed by Five's taste even more pleasing than the idea of Five plucking up her courage to ask for it.


End file.
